PSI - Issue 44

Mariateresa Guadagnuolo et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 44 (2023) 766–773 Guadagnuolo et al. / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000

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for the breeding of royal horses and agricultural and dairy production. It was designed by the architect Francesco Collecini, a pupil of Luigi Vanvitelli, with a clear homage to the schemes of Palladian villas and an external arrangement that recalls the one realized by Vanvitelli for the Royal Palace of Caserta. The complex, symmetrical, has a central building (royal residence) and eight shed buildings (once used as stables), interspersed with eight towers that, on the upper floors were used as homes for staff and on the lower floors housed the agricultural and dairy activities (Fig. 2). The building structures are in tuff masonry with different thicknesses from building to building. Some buildings underwent consolidation and restoration, while others still present damage and deterioration.

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Fig. 2. Chimneys of the Royal Palace of Carditello.

The Royal Palace has numerous fireplace chimneys, some at the building perimeter, others located inside (Fig. 2). All the flues across the attic floor of the buildings: the perimeter chimneys for about one meter, the inner for larger height (maximum 2.55 m). The protruding stack is always 2.75 m high (Fig. 2a). Therefore, the highest chimney is 5.30 m high from the attic floor. The procedure outlined in the next sections is applied to the highest interior chimney stack of towers. These towers are 17.65 m high and their attic story floor is 13.65 m above the ground level. The wall thickness varies from 2.10 m on the ground floor to about 0.70 m on the attic floor. The towers have vaults at the first level and timber structures at the upper stories. The restored roof structure consists of glulam timber planks and overlying clay tiles. The chimney flues are built of tuff or clay brick masonry, whereas the protruding stack is always of bricks. The hollow cross-section is 0.75 m by 0.72 m and is 0.20 m thick. 2.1. Failure mechanisms and kinematic analysis of chimney stacks The safety of chimney stacks can be assessed by the equilibrium limit analysis, according to the kinematic approach. The choice of failure mechanisms depends on the presence of cracks, the quality of the connection between constituents, and the interaction with the roof structure. The most likely failure mechanisms are shown in Fig. 3, which does not include the totality of the possible ones. Moreover, chimneys can also collapse exceeding the resistance in some sections, which can be easily studied through the common analysis of hollow masonry cross sections.

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Fig. 3. Failure mechanisms of chimney stacks: (a) M C , (b) M S , (c) M P .